Summer is Over

Is it just me, or was this the shortest summer on record?

It makes up for last summer, which was the LONGEST.
This was the summer we waited and worried about Jared's job. We didn't do a whole lot else, besides takin' it easy, but it was still a blast. Next summer I'm doing a bucket list, so we get more fun packed in.

We spent a lot of time at Seven Peaks.  Only it wasn't until the very end of the summer that the boys agreed to try out some slides, and discovered they loved them. 

We spent a lot of time in the lazy river, wave pool and kid's pool.




This is what we named "The Water Jumpy Thingy."  I got the idea from Five Real Moms.  You duct tape two shower curtain liners together and fill it with water, and literally chill out on it.  Very cool.  Only I forgot about it and killed a big patch of grass.  Oops!



We watched baseball games

Tyler learned how to ride a bike (sometimes with the handlebars backwards, as shown here).  At the beginning of the summer we didn't have much hope for him.  He had absolutely no balance.  But he stuck with it, and was SO proud of himself when he finally took off.

Now he and Dougie can ride around together.He also lost his first tooth on his first day of first grade. 

Back to school!  So far, so good.  They all say their teachers are nice, which is the most important thing, if I recall correctly.  They have friends in their classes and a good time at recess, so their lives are good.  I am enjoying my very long and quiet days with just Allie and me.  Unfortunately I'm already out of bon bons, and I can't stand Soaps anymore, so I'll just have to get my house clean, play with my baby and sew some fun projects.  It's a hard life, I know.

Joey turns 11

Joey loves Minecraft these days, so naturally he wanted a minecraft cake. This is a "piece of dirt with grass on it" cake, and a diamond pickaxe and shovel on top. You'd have to be familiar with the game for any of that to make much sense. He loved it.

Same sort of pinata.

Which they had a blast destroying, as usual.

And I now have an 11-year old. I couldn't ask for a better kid.

Oh Happy Day!

Well it looks like the job hunt is over. 
FINALLY.
Perhaps it didn't seem that long for all of you, but it felt like a lifetime to some of us.
Jared had an interview in Colorado as I mentioned a couple months ago, and then he had one here in Utah.  Both were really promising, and so we had to make the decision on where we really wanted to live. 
We agonized over it.  We have been planning to move to Colorado for years now, but now that it came down to it we weren't so sure.  It was going to be really expensive to move (not to mention a humongous pain in the butt), but mostly we have worried about whether it's the best thing for the kids. 
We could think of little else for these past weeks.  We prayed to know what we should do, we asked the kids what they thought (they were ok with either way), talked about it endlessly, cried about it, lost many nights of sleep, and had many stomache aches.  The problem was that there wasn't a right or wrong, really, they are both good places.  We couldn't lose either way, but we also couldn't win; if we move to Colorado it's farther from my family.  If we stay here it's farther from Jared's. 
In the end we felt like we really should stay here for now.  It feels right.  Who knows what will happen down the road, but for now we're here to stay.
Jared got an official job offer today at the hospital where he did his preceptorship!  They have to do a background check, and then he can start, which should be in a couple weeks.
I don't have to pack all our stuff into a huge UHaul and drive it hundreds of miles.
The boys can stay at their school with the kids and teachers they know and keep the friends they have.
We're not farther from my family  :)   We're not closer to Jared's  :(

I thought I would finally sleep well tonight, but now I can't stop smiling and thinking about our future.
It was a good day.

Allie now

Allie is moving right along, in her own way.  She has two teeth now, and it looks like the next ones that are going to appear will make her look like a vampire.  At first I was thinking "NOOOOOOOO!  I don't want her to look like a monster!"  But now that I've gotten used to the idea I think it will be funny, and interesting, and very like her, to do things in an odd sort of way.  Besides, vampires are in style.  Not as much as Zombies, but still.

 She drinks tons of milk, fortified with formula.  She eats lots of different kinds of food.  She loves all fruit, except peaches, and she'll even eat things like taco soup; onions, beans and all.  But she just doesn't eat very much of anything.  So it's good that she drinks milk.  Weird to me, though, because none of my boys would drink it.

 She is right where she should be in her motor skills and her cognitive development, but she is behind in communication; she doesn't point at things, or shake her head for yes or no, things like that.  She just started saying "Hi," which is her first word, and I think she says "Tyler."  When someone knocks on the door, nine times out of ten it's Dougie, wanting to play with Tyler.  So we call "Tyler!"  Now when she hears the door she yells "Tyler!"  At least that's what we think she's saying.  It sounds like it. 
But the way she mostly communicates is through whining and crying, which can get pretty annoying.  We're working on baby signs, so hopefully that helps, or hopefully she just starts talking soon. 

Her hair is growing slowly.  She's starting to reject all her cute headbands  :(  I can't complain because she's the only 1 year old I know who will wear them.

She gets into everything; she pulls stuff out of the garbage can, turns off the computer, plays in the toilet, etc. 

Here's what she did 2 minutes ago:

 Help, Mom!  I'm stuck on this huge cliff!!!

She's the sunshine in our lives, a precious blessing from heaven, and a huge pain in the neck.  :)

My new project

I think I want to start selling stuff on Etsy.  I love making baby girl things.  I think it's so fun!  My only problem is that I'm not very creative and original, and I'm not going to rip off people's ideas and make money off them. 

I'll start with pillowcase dresses, headbands, and maybe some skirts with ruffles in the back and sweater dresses.  I have some ideas for legwarmers, too.  I might do baby quilts and quilling, too.  We'll see how it goes.  The competition is pretty stiff--go there and search baby headband, and over 100,000 will appear.  But obviously people sell stuff, so why not me? 

So this is my first item.  It's a reversible pillowcase dress, which I think is really sweet.  I haven't got the website up yet, I'll tell you when I do, and there will be a good friends and family discount.  I hope this project is a success, because I'm excited about it, and I think it will be fun.

 (and hopefully profitable).

Today's adventure

Really it was a couple days ago, but I've been trying to upload a video of Allie dancing, but it is not working.  She dances to weird things, usually; my serger, the kitchenaid, the closing hymn in Relief Society.  The other day she was rockin' out to Journey's "Don't stop Believing" and Joey and I were laughing and trying to capture it on video.  Meanwhile, there was a whole drama unfolding in the kitchen that we were oblivious to.  Tyler was trying to warm up a piece of leftover pizza in the microwave, and was having some trouble.  He came in and told me he put it in for too long, and I was distracted, and told him to just let it cool off.  Several minutes later we hear him yelling, then he comes in crying and tells me "Now it's burneded!"  I went to see what the big deal was, and found smoke billowing out of the microwave.

It's what happens when it cooks in the microwave for 10 minutes instead of 10 seconds.  Our kitchen still stinks a little.  He was pretty upset, especially since we didn't have any more pizza, and he was still hungry.  But some Ramen noodles made up for it.  



He'll probably hate me someday for putting this on here, but I had no one else to chuckle with, so here it goes on the blog.  Often when he puts his socks on he pulls them over his pant legs.  Not on purpose, I don't think, it just happens somehow, and he doesn't bother to fix it.  Today I didn't fix it either because I wanted to see how long he'd go, and I snapped some pictures instead.

(hee hee)!